Time Travel Study MaterialsRemember to read the articles in the Essentials section. These cover all the essential skills you’ll need as a self-published author. They are not just for beginners either. They go in depth on how to successfully write, publish, and market your own books.
Should I Write Time Travel?The mind-bending twists and turns it takes to conceive and execute a good time travel tale with all the potential paradoxes and contradictions are not for everybody. But if you can envision (or carefully map out on sticky notes or a red-yarned murder board) the connections of your characters and consequences across multiple timelines, then have it.
Should I Write History?Back to history Do you read a lot of history books? Even more than fiction? A lot of writers do, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should write one. A lot of the skills of a novelist will transfer to writing history books, but not all of them. The research you do for a novel? Trivial compared to what a historian does. You must dig into primary sources and be able to interpret them as to the prejudices and plans of the original author. You must come to conclusions and be able to defend them, because they will be attacked....
Should I Write Cyberpunk?Back to cyberpunk Born of the cold war and the onset of the digital age, cyberpunk is the SF genre of disaffected youth. Technology is feared and desired in equal measure. Would you be the first one to put a shunt into your neck to get direct access to the net? Would you modify your body and mind, melding tech to flesh and mind to machine? You should consider writing cyberpunk if… You should probably try a different genre if… The formula for success with a cyberpunk book is pretty straightforward. The hard part of all this is writing a...
Cyberpunk Study MaterialsRemember to read the articles in the Essentials section. These cover all the essential skills you’ll need as a self-published author. They are not just for beginners either. They go in depth on how to successfully write, publish, and market your own books.
Show Don’t Tell: The Bad Writing Advice That Sounds GoodIf you’ve been a writer for more than say, an hour, you’ve already received numerous pieces of advice on how to do it. And while a lot of it may actually be good advice, there is undoubtably a great deal that is bad. Problem is, some of that bad advice may appear to be good. Even worse, some of that bad advice is widely accepted as good. “Show Don’t Tell” is one of those. It is one of the most pervasive pieces of bad advice masquerading as good out there. The problem isn’t that it’s necessarily bad advice, it’s that...
Science Fiction Study MaterialsRemember to read the articles in the Essentials section. These cover all the essential skills you’ll need as a self-published author. They are not just for beginners either. They go in depth on how to successfully write, publish, and market your own books.
Should I Write Science Fiction?Do you love technology and innovation, the vast reaches of the universe and the tiniest specks of quarks and leptons? Do you think about the problems of today and wonder how in the future they will be solved or exacerbated? Do you wonder what comes NEXT?
Then science fiction (Sci-fi, SF, speculative fiction) is for you.
General Novel Study MaterialsOnline Resources Plot Development Charts and Tips — from Writer’s Digest and author Jess Zafarris. Downloadable Worksheets — from Writer’s Digest and author Joseph Bates Salman Rushdie teaches storytelling and writing and Margaret Atwood teaches creative writing at Masterclass.com How to write a Fight Scene — by Rita Chang-Eppig Melissa Febos on Writing About Sex — “My whole practical thesis around the craft of writing a sex scene is this: it is exactly the same as any other scene.” 100 Tips That May or May Not Improve Your Writing — Caveat lector Books to Read Writing the Novel — Lawrence...
Using Vellum to Format Your BookThough there are other tools out there, Vellum is simply the best we have found for formatting your book. Let’s walk through formatting your book using this excellent program. Start Up Start Vellum and pick either New Book or Import Word File I picked new book just to look at a clean interface before importing a Word document. You can write your whole book directly into Vellum, but it lacks robust editing tools, especially change tracking if you are having critiqued or working with a coauthor. Better to write your book in something else and then import it. There are...
